Collaborative and support oriented work has over the past year had an impact in the study, and on the understanding, of a spectrum of diseases and disease processes such as cardiovascular disease (atherosclerosis), inflammatory respiratory disease, obesity and type II diabetes, inflammatory and immune-mediated renal disease, gene expression and gene regulation, axial skeletal development, cancer and transgenerational effects of diet restriction. Additionally, associations between exacerbation of chronic progressive nephropathy in subchronic studies and increased incidence of renal tumors in subsequent 2-year studies was examined for male rats. In addition, the mouse phenotyping group has assisted with the phenotyping a few adult genetically engineered mice projects. While the focus of services provided by this facility has been on the histological assessment with embryonic lethal phenotypes, additional services have been provided in assisting with special necropsy techniques and special applications with regards to RNA isolation. The laser microdissection group has worked with investigators to establish successful protocols for the isolation of protein (western blots and proteomic analysis), RNA from frozen and more recently from laser-microdissected, paraffin-embedded tissue (quantitative RT-PCR) and DNA (embryo genotyping) from laser-microdissected tissue samples. The immunohistochemistry group has worked with investigators to establish immunostaining protocols for a variety of unique tissue markers.